


We're lost out here in the Stars

by TheHoardingPuffin



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Gladers, Like seriously this is basically the Gladers tragic backstory from before Thomas arrived, Origin Story, Podfic Welcome, Pre-Canon, Pre-The Maze Runner, The Glade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:15:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27105565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheHoardingPuffin/pseuds/TheHoardingPuffin
Summary: He lost consciousness to the sound of his own screaming, muffled by the water-like substance that surrounded him in the steel-and-glass tank, and he woke up in bright sunlight, with the sound of wind whistling through narrow openings and around corners sounding in his ears, and not a single memory in his head except for a name.Minho comes to in the Glade and, together with the others, has to figure out what the hell is going on here.
Kudos: 2





	We're lost out here in the Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the song "Lost in the Stars" by Kurt Weill -> "Forgetting the promise that we've heard him say, and we're lost out here in the stars"
> 
> So, I've been going through the "Fanfiction" folder on my Desktop and I found a section full of old TMR fic that was actually my attempt at re-writing my cousin'S old Newt x OC fanfiction (with not only her permission, but actually her explicit wishing for me to re-write it)... yeah I never really got around to doing that at all, but amongst snippets and in the whirl of 19.000 words total, I found this little thingy and after fixing and nudging some bits here and there, I decided to post it here. Let us see if the TMR Fandom is still alive.   
> As always, I would deeply appreciate your feedback and, if you so decide, kudos, and I strive on comments.  
> Loads of love,   
> Lotta

He lost consciousness to the sound of his own screaming, muffled by the water-like substance that surrounded him in the steel-and-glass tank, and he woke up in bright sunlight, with the sound of wind whistling through narrow openings and around corners sounding in his ears, and not a single memory in his head except for a name.

A hand grabbed his shoulder and shook him lightly.

“Hey, wake up! Rise and shine!”

He opened an eye, blinked and then opened the second one as well. Above him kneeled a boy, maybe fourteen years old or something, with dark skin and a neatly shaven head. He was looking at him in a sort of worried way, which was strange considering he was sure he had never seen this boy in his life...

“I’m Alby”, the boy said. “Can you stand up?”

The boy – Alby – made a move to help him onto his feet, but he scrambled backwards as fast as he could, until he hit something that was behind him. No, not something, someone, as he realized when he looked over his shoulder. The someone was another boy, with reddish curls and much paler skin than Minho. He also looked a bit younger… he was a stranger, too.

“Are you scared or something?” Alby seemed confused.

He bit down on his teeth and refused the direct answer.

“What do you want?”, he hissed out instead.

“Right now? Help you up”, Alby answered. “Then wake up all the others and figure out where the hell we are. I’m not gonna hurt you, man, okay?”

He took a deep breath and slowly got to his feet, trying to look for something he could potentially use as a weapon. There was nothing – just more unconscious teenage boys laying in the grass around them, some looking barely eleven years old.

“I don’t know you”, he said. “Why would I trust you?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because we are in the same fucking situation?”, Alby snapped back. “We’re both here, we’re both awake with about a dozen others asleep to our feet and in a place we don’t know, and have no idea how he got here…”

“That’s no reason for trust.”

“Dude!”, Alby yelled in obvious frustration. “Please, just… I don’t know what to do, okay? Just help me out here, is that within possibility here?”

“Help you? With what?”

“Waking everyone up, understanding this mess of a situation, for example.” Alby crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Or were you planning on leaving them here, and doing nothing?”

“I wasn’t planning on anything, honestly.” He mirrored the arms-crossed-pose.

Alby sighed. “You’re fucking stubborn, you know that? Okay, how about that: I told you my name, you tell me yours, then we make a plan. We can’t stand around here forever. That sound okay?”

He took another deep breath. This Alby guy was right, of course; keeping to himself was no use, and there was a lesser chance of survival (why did he think about survival? The area looked safe and peaceful) if he stayed a loner. Safety in numbers and all that.

“I’m Minho.”

Alby seemed surprisingly relieved. „There, that wasn’t so hard, now, was it?”

No, Minho thought. Not at all hard.

„Good, so… where are we?”, he asked instead, and looked around a bit more. The sky above their heads was bright blue, speckled with small white clouds, and the ground was covered in bright green grass and soft moss patches, with exception of a large white metallic trapdoor a few metres away from them. In the middle of the meadow stood a crooked wooden cabin, and a good bit away from them was what looked like a small forest. Said forest was huddled into the corner of two huge concrete walls. There were four of these walls, they surrounded the whole place, and each one had a circa two metre long gap just about in the middle. Apart from the walls, the place looked relatively normal, but the walls made it all bizarre and strange. They were large, more than ten metres high, covered in ivy at the bottom, and they looked… intimidating. To say the least.

“Is this a prison or something?”

“Maybe.” Alby shrugged and kneeled down next to the red-haired boy Minho had almost stepped on before. He inspected the boy, checked for a pulse and breathing. “The question is, why are we here? And why are there gaps in the walls? Doesn’t make much sense for a prison.”

That was, of course, true.

The red-head moaned softly, then came to.

“What the…“ His head snapped up, and he jumped to his feet, staring at Minho and Alby with wide dark eyes, fists raised in a defensive stance. 

“Who the bloody hell are you?”

“Whoa there, buddy!”, Minho said, trying his best to maintain a calm tone of voice. “We won’t harm you, okay?”

They explained to him the little they knew. They learned that the boy’s name was Newton, and that he was just as in the dark about things as they were.

Together, they started to wake up the others. The more of them came to, with or without prompting and prodding from the ones already awake, the louder and the more panicked the buzz of voices filling the air grew. Some of the younger ones were crying, pretending like they weren’t.

Finally, one of the older boys – judging by his looks he had to be around seventeen – shouted: “Okay, can everybody shut up for one second?!”

Most of them fell silent.

“Listen, I get it!”, the boy said. “All of this is confusing and scary, very fucking scary, but crying won’t get us anywhere!”

He paused for a moment, bright blue eyes wandering around, looking at everyone pensively. 

“So, my name’s Nick. That’s all I know – and from what I’ve heard so far, that’s how it is with all of you.”

A flurry of nods and mumbled confirmations answered him.

“Seems like we’re all in the same boat.” Nick sighed, running a hand through thick brown hair. “Shit… I suggest we all pull ourselves together. Work together. If we don’t, I fear we’ll all just tear each other apart by the end. That clear to everybody?”

Again, nods and mumbles.

“Hey, wait a minute!”, someone called next to Minho. He was pale-eyed, with a blonde buzzcut. “Who made you assface the leader here?!”  
“Nobody.” Nick shrugged.

„I did!“, Minho called out before he could even think about it.

“I did, too!”, Alby shouted.

“Me, too!”, came it from a boy with a birthmark over one eye.

“Me, three!”

“Me, too, by the way.”

“I do!”

“I did!”

“Okay, guys, guys, that’s enough!” Nick held up his hands as if in surrender.

The blonde guy scowled. “Fucking hell”, he spat. “Fine, whatever. Hail the fucking leader!“

He stalked off.

Minho snorted. „Very grown up.”

“Okay, first things first”, Nick spoke up, again. “We need to understand this place. Let’s build groups. Nobody goes alone. Search for food, water, electricity, medicine. Whatever we might need. And nobody goes further than those walls, understood?”

“Sounds like a plan”, Alby said, looking at Minho and Newton. “Shall we?”

Nick gave every group a specific sector of the terrain to search. Minho, Newton and Alby had been given the small crooked wooden cabin standing in the middle of the green glade. It looked like just one gust of wind could blow it over into a heap of wooden boards and rusty nails, Minho thought. As they stepped into it, they found it had a floor made of stomped-down dirt.

“We will definitely need someone who can handle woodwork”, Newton mumbled, eyeing the gaps in the walls suspiciously.

“Totally.” Minho inspected a small, steep wooden staircase leading up to another floor. He tested the steps with his hand, then slowly made his way up the stairs, on his hands and knees to not overexert the amount of weight the wood could carry. He didn’t know why or how he knew to do this instead of walking normally – it was like instinct.

“Looks good so far”, he called out and crawled the rest of the way, onto the second floor. It looked old and brittle, but as he slowly stood up, he found that it was much sturdier than it looked, carrying his weight just fine.

“Okay, we have some field beds up here”, he called out. “And some… like a small wardrobe-thingy.”  
“Anything else?”, Alby called from the bottom of the stairs. Minho checked the wardrobe, opening every drawer. “Well, a book… that’s it.”

He climbed back down, handing the book to Alby – though it barely deserved the name book, it was more like a blotter with a title writing in felt tip pen.

“ _Simple Healing Methods_ ”, Alby read. “Strange… but this should be helpful.”

That evening, they all sat around a small fire that one of them had been able to light with dry wood they had found in the little forest. One of them, a buy with very curly hair names Jared, had found a match book in his pockets, which helped immensely. When Minho asked him, why he had them, he just shrugged. Which made sense. How would he know?

“What do you think why we’re here?”, Jared asked.

Minho sighed deeply. “Maybe this is a prison”, he mused. “And we are all nation-wide hunted psychos and murderers.”

Jared shuddered. “Hopefully not… but I don’t have a better theory either.”

“Maybe we’ll find out soon”, Newt said and sat down next to them, rubbing his cold hands. The day had been comfortably warm, but with the dark of the night had come a bitter coldness.

“I for one would be totally satisfied to know what we’re supposed to _live_ on.”

They had found a water tank behind the house that was connected to the ground, seemingly getting the water from underground, and a filtered tab making the water safe (probably), but no cups or bowls or anything. They hadn’t found electricity or food, nothing.

“Well…”, a boy Minho was almost sure was named Ben said. “There are beds. And maybe that’s a sick bay or something up there… wouldn’t make sense to give us that if we were sent here to just… die… right?”

„Let’s hope you’re right“, Alby said, darkly.

In that moment, a deafening thundering noise filled the air, shook the ground and made them all cower down and cover their ears. It sounded as if the sky was breaking apart above them. Two kids started screaming.

“The gates!”, Alby shouted above the noise, pointing towards the concrete walls. “They are closing!”  
And indeed, the walls that had previously had gaps were moving, sliding toward each other in a hellish noise, until they closed with one last ear-splitting thud.

No doubt about it now – they were trapped.


End file.
